Archive for tag:
the times

It is now official: drilling for shale gas by
fracturing rock with water may rattle the odd teacup, but is highly
unlikely to cause damaging earthquakes. That much has been obvious
to anybody who has followed the development of the shale gas
industry in America over the past ten years. More than 25,000 wells
drilled have caused a handful of micro-seismic events that can
barely be felt.

The two rumbles that resulted from drilling a well near
Blackpool last year were tiny. To call a two-magnitude tremor an
earthquake is a bit like calling a hazelnut lunch. Such tremors
happen naturally more than 15 times a year but go unnoticed and
they are a common consequence of many other forms of underground
work such as coalmining and geothermal drilling. Earthquakes caused
by hydroelectric projects, in which dams load the crust and
lubricate faults, can be much greater and more damaging. The
Sichuan earthquake that killed 90,000 in 2008 was probably caused
by a dam.

I have an article in The Times today (behind a paywall) on
ocean acidification. Here's the gist:

Today in Beijing an alliance of
scientists called Oceans United will present the United Nations
with a request for $5 billion a year to be spent on monitoring the
oceans. High among their concerns is ocean acidification, which
`could make it harder for animals such as lobsters, crabs,
shellfish, coral or plankton to build protective
shells'.

As opinion polls reveal that global
warming is losing traction on the public imagination, environmental
pressure groups have been cranking the engine on this `other carbon
dioxide problem'. `Time is running out' wrote two activists in
Scientific American in August, `to limit acidification before it
irreparably harms the food chain on which the world's oceans - and
people - depend.'